Art dealer Laura Russo dies of cancer at 66

The staff of the Laura Russo Gallery in 2006. Russo is in the center, bottom row. There remain increasingly few direct links to the crucial mid-century cultural world responsible for the creative mecca that is contemporary Portland.

One of those, art dealer Laura Russo, died Thursday evening of cancer, according to her son, Dylan Lawrence. She was 66.

Simply put: No one in the current art world championed local and Northwest artists as passionately and consistently as Russo, whose 23 year-old gallery is a de facto museum for regional artists, past and present: Lucinda Parker, Jay Backstrand, Fay Jones, and the estates of Louis Bunce, Robert Colescott, Carl Morris and her uncle, Michele Russo, among others, are represented by the Russo business.

But Russo was more than the seemingly shy yet quietly tough art dealer on Northwest 21st Avenue. She was an embodiment of a specific mid-century lineage whose spirit and heritage continues but whose active champions are now few.

"We will never see this kind of lifelong commitment again," says Bruce Guenther, a longtime Russo friend and chief curator at the Portland Art Museum. "Laura was literally raised in this town. Her knowledge of the history of the cultural scene here, and her connections -- social and personal -- with the artists of this city can't be matched."

Born in 1943 in Waterbury, CT, Russo graduated from high school at 17 and then moved to Portland, where her uncle and aunt, artists Michele Russo and Sally Haley, lived. In the early '60s, she attended the Museum Art School, now the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where Michele Russo taught. In the epicenter of Portland's sleepy cultural world, she hung out with another student who would eventually become her friend and mentor, Arlene Schnitzer; she also took classes from some of Oregon's significant artists, including Bunce, who would later be represented by Schnitzer and then Russo.

Russo's colorful aunt and uncle with their politically left-leaning sympathies took to Laura Russo, too, becoming the young woman's personal and professional mentors as well as surrogate parents. They also immersed her in Portland's mid century bohemian milieu, the generation that birthed the city's modern cultural scene.

Schnitzer, who started the city's only major art gallery of that time, The Fountain Gallery, gave Russo her first art world job. Russo worked at The Fountain for 11 years, learning the business and most importantly, learning about the artists in a funky, backwater city that was transitioning from the modern into the contemporary.

When Schnitzer decided to close her gallery, Russo, the longtime assistant and friend, took over. But while many like to believe that Schnitzer simply handed the gallery over to Russo, along with her artists and rolodex of collectors, Russo actually bought it, lining up backers to fund a purchase. And, contrary to prevailing belief, Russo shed many of the artists represented by Schnitzer.

But for those she kept, and later added, Russo burnished and built upon that commitment, creating one of the most successful Northwest galleries ever. That success, however, became Russo's artistic reputation, for better and worse. Over the years, many critics criticized Russo for being unimaginative or too conservative in the artists she represented.

Indeed, in recent years, Russo showed flexibility and added younger, edgier artists but always highlighted Northwest figures and their reputation for high craft at the seeming exclusion of conceptual sophistication.

Part of that was because Russo found a financial formula that worked in a difficult, often transient business. But the larger reason was that Russo simply believed in her artists and what they represented. They were part of her family -- and, in the case of her aunt and uncle, literally. And she would not desert that commitment even when prevailing art world trends and a changing world in general suggested a different course.

"That was her strength," says painter and longtime Russo artist Lucinda Parker. "Her persistence and tenacity. She didn't drop people just because their work didn't sell. Instead, she stuck with them."

That toughness was easy to underestimate because it might have been easy to underestimate Russo. In a business where the owner must be the public face, and where connections to society's elite and powerful are often necessary ingredients to success, Russo was an anomaly. She was not showy or impressed by surface appearances. She didn't socialize or attend high powered galas or events with the cognoscenti. She was too much the grounded, working class young woman from Waterbury, CT., who once worked for AAA as an emergency dispatcher.

"With Laura, it was all about the art, not about her," says Tom Cramer, a longtime Portland artist who joined the Russo gallery a few years ago. "She was the best dealer I ever had. Period."

She was also an intimate person to those who worked for her in a business that is often defined by a bottom line of wins and losses. Rarely was there staff turnover at Russo's. Artists were paid on time, too. And the gallery was perhaps the most efficiently managed in town.

"I never had a boss who took such an interest in our personal lives away from the gallery," says Martha Lee, the gallery's longtime manager. "She was the one who encouraged me to become a single parent. She just really cared."

Because of her commitment to the history of Northwest artists, many feel that Russo's passing is also the end of an era.

But it isn't, says Arlene Schnitzer.

"It's not the end of an era," Schnitzer says. "It's the evolution of one. Just as Laura continued what I did, someone else will continue what she did."

Russo had long been talking with manager Martha Lee about one day selling the gallery to Lee. But Russo's illness sped up that process. After Russo's death, the gallery announced that Lee was in the process of finalizing her purchase of the gallery. Lee says the gallery will keep Russo's name and that she's "honored that Laura would entrust this to me. My intention is to keep building on what she spent a lifetime working."

Russo is survived by a son, Dylan Lawrence, of Portland; daughter Maia Lawrence, of Claremont, Calif.; and her longtime companion, Michihiro Kosuge.

There will be a public memorial service for Laura Russo on Feb. 17 at 3 p.m. at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.